Claimed by the Alpha I Hate – Episode 30
Daisy woke alone in the Alpha bed. Morning light slipped around the curtains, illuminating the untouched space beside her. For several seconds she stared at it as though Nolan’s absence required an explanation.
Then memory returned. Nolan had never promised to join her. He had spent every night on the office couch precisely to protect the boundaries she demanded. Expecting him in bed was both unreasonable and humiliatingly revealing.
She pressed her face into the pillow. The fabric carried his scent strongly enough to sharpen her disappointment. Somewhere between the investigation report and the full moon, she had begun imagining what it would feel like to wake beside him.
The thought annoyed her. Nolan had invaded Eastwind, concealed his identity, and filled her life with rules. One cleared accusation did not transform him into someone she should want.
Yet he had also surrendered his room, defended her from his own pack, and refused to exploit the relief she felt when the report cleared him. Daisy could no longer reduce him to the monster of Eastwind rumors.
She listened for him through the wall. The office was empty. More unsettling, the mansion sounded duller than it had the day before, as if heavy fabric covered every noise.
Daisy sat up and focused on the guards outside. She could hear voices, but not their individual heartbeats. The absence should have relieved her after the hunger in the gym. Instead, it felt like discovering a door inside herself had been locked.
She touched her teeth. No fangs answered. When she reached for the strange force that had scattered the weapon racks, she found only silence.
A knock came at the door. Nolan entered after waiting for permission, fully dressed despite the early hour. Exhaustion marked his face, and his attention swept over Daisy as though confirming she remained unharmed.
“Where were you?” she asked before she could choose a less revealing greeting. Nolan noticed the disappointment beneath the irritation.
“Investigating a breach.” He crossed to the window. “Something entered this room last night, or came close enough to interfere with the bond.”
Daisy remembered the dream closing around her and an unseen force dragging her from Nolan. “I couldn’t reach you,” she said. “Everything went dark.”
He turned sharply. “What else do you feel?” Daisy admitted that her heightened senses and power were gone. Nolan’s suspicion hardened into certainty: the intruder had not failed. It had come specifically to change her.
“Maybe that’s good,” Daisy said, though the words felt false. Without vampire power, the pack might stop fearing her. She could return to being merely wolfless rather than something hunted.
“Someone entered my home and took a part of you without consent.” Nolan’s anger filled the room. “There is nothing good about that.”
His response surprised her. He did not celebrate the disappearance of vampire abilities despite everything they represented to Blackwood. He cared more that the choice had been stolen from Daisy.
Nolan ordered her to remain inside while he expanded the search. This time, Daisy did not argue immediately. Whoever reached her inside the Alpha bedroom had proven that even the mansion was not completely safe.
As he turned to leave, she asked, “Were you coming to bed last night?” The question escaped so quietly that she hoped he had not heard.
Nolan paused at the door. “I didn’t think you wanted me there.” His answer carried no teasing, only restrained hope. Daisy could not make herself deny it.
He left before she found the courage to ask him to stay. Daisy looked again at the empty side of the bed, troubled by her sealed power but equally unsettled by a simpler truth: sometime during the night, she had wanted Nolan Fenrir beside her.